Words
by SafireGriffon
Summary: Fran has a contemplative moment about birth, death, and a lot of other things that there just aren't words for.


A/N: I apologize if the last bit doesn't seem like it fits in with the beginning. It honestly started as the question of how viera reproduce and turned into…this. I guess my obsession with Balthier is showing. (rushes to cover self)

Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy XII, Fran, or the viera. Do own this idea, though, so please don't use without permission.

**Words**

Fran was very surprised when she first learned that humes did not mean "family tree" literally. (There had later been a very enlightening—and somewhat disturbing—conversation with a kind young woman whose name Fran could no longer remember. Now she knew why men and women alike stared so much at her outfit.)

For the viera, "family tree" was very literal. There are no male and female viera—there are only viera. There are family trees scattered throughout the wood. Each one is guarded by several wards, the last two of which can only be opened to the sisters that belonged to that tree.

Family trees only blossomed once every one hundred years. The blossoms are beautiful, but they stay for only a short time before they fall. Sometimes one or two of the flowers will become fruit, but most of the time those fruit stay small and hard until they fall of the tree and rot. But sometimes, _sometimes_, the flower becomes a fruit and the fruit grows. It starts off small enough to hold easily inside a closed fist, but it grows and grows for five years. For the last three, any sisters belonging to the tree leave the village and watch the tree, making sure it doesn't fall, making sure the birds and insects do not molest it (the wards keep all the monsters away).

Sisters are there when the fruit becomes so large it barely fits in the circle of your closed arms. They are waiting there quietly when the fruit starts moving and rocking. When the first fist breaks through the fruit's skin.

They are there when the young viera tumbles out and lies gasping on the ground. They are there when she speaks her name (the Wood whispers to her long before her sisters can, so a viera's first word is her own name).

_Jote._

_Fran._

_Mjrn._

They do not return to the village until the newest sister can be left alone, for to be viera is to be alone.

This is why it is devastating without the voice of the Wood—viera are not meant to be with others, for they never truly leave the Wood's womb. They are never meant to leave her green embrace. Those who wish to leave the Wood cannot come back; a child cannot re-enter the womb once she is born. Not that Fran could have explained this to the humes, she who had no womb herself, she who did not know of wombs or of blood until after she had left the Wood, centuries older than any girl on the street who would point and whisper about what sort of woman would wear such clothing. Fran could never explain it to any viera who lived still within the Wood—how do you tell your sisters that they are yet unborn without calling them children? How can you explain to them the bigness of the world outside somehow does and does not make up for the loneliness and the cold?

There are no words for this. Just as there are no words that can explain why Fframran still lives inside Balthier's skin, how Fran can still hear a crying babe in his voice. Just as there are no words that can explain Basch's almost obsessive need to protect and to love, obsessive to the point that he never took any time to have a family to protect and to love. Just as there are no words for the hope in Vaan's eyes, the trepidation in Panelo's. Just as there are no words for Vossler and Reddas and yes, even Vayne. It often strikes Fran that, as much as the humes seem to value and love words, they don't invent words for the most important things. Perhaps that is why the viera speak so little.

"You alright there, Fran?"

Her ears prick the tiniest bit at this intrusion on her makeshift solitude; she remembers that the rest of the group are all seated only feet away from her. She takes the time to replay the words in her head, to hear the timbre in them; the man and the child, the dashing and debonair sky pirate and the terribly lonely, grieving boy warring for control of the words. She gives what Balthier now knows is a viera smile and nods.

She needs not words.


End file.
